Elderly patients prescribed combination angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB) had a higher risk of kidney failure and death, according to a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) . This study, by researchers from the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary, sought to determine the safety of combination therapy of ACE inhibitors and ARB in the clinical setting as some randomized trials indicate an increased risk of kidney failure. Randomized trials may over or underestimate the risk of ...

Hayseed Dixie will bring their unique blend of bluegrass and rock music to the Cotswolds on Tuesday April 26th. The American band, who emerged in 2001 with the release of their debut album A Hillbilly Tribute to AC/DC, have scheduled a performance at the Gloucester Guildhall. With several more LPs now under their belt, in addition to well-received performances at festivals such as Glastonbury and Download, the group have won plenty of admirers for their eccentric and tongue-in-cheek approach to making music. According to the official Hayseed Dixie website, the ...

Stanley Miller gained fame with his 1953 experiment showing the synthesis of organic compounds thought to be important in setting the origin of life in motion. Five years later, he produced samples from a similar experiment, shelved them and, as far as friends and colleagues know, never returned to them in his lifetime. More 50 years later, Jeffrey Bada, Miller's former student and a current Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego professor of marine chemistry, discovered the samples in Miller's laboratory material and made a discovery that represents a potential ...

Sydney's Musica Viva Festival (MVF) takes place next month, combining emerging talent from the Australian Youth Orchestra with some of the world's finest artists. They are set to come together at the New South Wales capital's Conservatorium of Music (CoM) for a series of collaborations that will be "bursting with energy and freshness", according to the organisers. The event consists of concerts, masterclasses and talks from the performers and other key guests. Highlights include a rendition of Graeme Koehne's Clarinet Quintet featuring Philip Arkinstall and the ...

In a study of 82 patients who were evaluated 12 or more years after undergoing laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding for morbid obesity, a majority of patients reported that they were satisfied with the procedure, although approximately 40 percent experienced major complications and nearly half required removal of their bands, according to a report posted online that will appear in the July print issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "There is substantial evidence that surgery is the only valid treatment for morbid obesity," the authors write ...

The incidence of melanoma appears higher in non-Hispanic white adolescent girls and young women living in higher socioeconomic neighborhoods than those living in lower socioeconomic areas, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the July print issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Melanoma is the most lethal form of skin cancer and represents a substantial cause of productive years of life lost to cancer, especially when occurring in young persons," the authors write as background information in the study. "Among non-Hispanic ...

Although universal newborn hearing screening programs appear to identify children with hearing loss at a younger age, nearly one-third of pediatric cochlear implant recipients pass newborn screening only to be diagnosed later in infancy or early childhood, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "When universal newborn hearing screening programs (UNHS) were initially conceived, it was presumed that most hearing-impaired children, especially those without risk factors for progressive ...

Some of the best contemporary and classic Spanish language movies will be showcased at La Mirada Film Festival (LMFF) in Melbourne next month. The organisers have called on a host of famous names to act as guest curators, including Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee, Pan's Labyrinth filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and Desperado star Antonio Banderas. LMFF 2011 runs from April 14th to 26th, kicking off with the Opening Night Gala at La Mirada Lounge, next door to ACMI Cinemas. Director Gustavo Taretto has been lined up to appear at the event. Guests will have the ...

Children with chronic inflammation of the middle ear can experience changes in their sense of taste, and these changes may be related to childhood obesity, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Chronic otitis media with effusion is a persistent inflammation of the middle ear, in which effusion fluid is retained in the middle ear cavity. "Otitis media with effusion (OME) is a disease with a high incidence in childhood and is a common cause of hearing disturbances in children," the ...

Patients with facial paralysis who underwent surgical treatment for a condition that leaves them unable to completely close their eyes reported improvement in comfort around the eyes and overall quality of life, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The inability to close the eye can be a devastating result of facial paralysis. "The resulting loss of corneal protection can lead to exposure keratitis [inflammation of the cornea], corneal ulceration, and potentially permanently vision loss," the ...

Ecologists have developed a better way of rearing bee larvae in the laboratory that could help discover why honey bee populations worldwide are declining. The technique, together with details of how statistics adapted from other areas of ecology can aid bee research, is published this week in the British Ecological Society's journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Human food security depends on bees because they pollinate so many of our crop plants. As a result, worldwide declines in both honey bee colonies and solitary bees are causing widespread concern. But faced ...

Over 10,000 people have attended the summit in previous years and the 2011 summit is expected to be the best yet. Anyone interested in attending the event must register for tickets at the Developer Summit website. Entrance will be denied in the absence of tickets. This year's event promises to be the most impressive yet with a packed schedule of 37 speakers including: Mark Miller (Chief Architect of IDE Tools division at Developer Express), Venkat Subramaniam (founder of Agile Developer, Inc.), and Tim Berglund. Alongside attending workshops and focused group sessions, ...

A new "templated growth" technique for fabricating nanoribbons of epitaxial graphene has produced structures just 15 to 40 nanometers wide that conduct current with almost no resistance. These structures could address the challenge of connecting graphene devices made with conventional architectures – and set the stage for a new generation of devices that take advantage of the quantum properties of electrons. "We can now make very narrow, conductive nanoribbons that have quantum ballistic properties," said Walt de Heer, a professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia ...

A replica of HMB Endeavour, used by Captain James Cook for his epic 18th century world voyage, will call at Brisbane next month. The original vessel was sent to the South Seas by King George III in order to view planet Venus's transit across the sun in 1769. It was hoped this would enable astronomers to calculate the distance between the earth and the star. Cook was also given secret orders from the Admiralty to discover the rumoured "Great South Land". Although he was unable to do this, he charted New Zealand's north and south islands and also sailed the east coast ...

VIDEO: Mahadevan and Liang created an animated model to show how peripheral growth causes the developing petals to ruffle at the edges and curve outward, leading to blooming. Click here for more information. Cambridge, Mass. - March 21, 2011 - The "lily white" has inspired centuries' worth of rich poetry and art, but when it comes to the science of how and why those delicately curved petals burst from the bud, surprisingly little is known. Now, however, mathematics has ...

The food truck frenzy is sweeping Orange County! On Thursday, April 14, 2011, The Alzheimer's Association will be front and center of the rolling food craze when it hosts an incredible gourmet food truck event. With authentic, innovative cuisine rumbling into Irvine from all over Southern California, you can bet the Alzheimer' s Food Truck Block Party will be packed with hungry mobile gourmands chomping at the bit to try the latest meals on wheels from more than 20 of the most popular gourmet food trucks in Southern California. So work up an appetite and bring everyone ...

Each of us carries a unique collection of trillions of friendly microbes in our intestines that helps break down food our bodies otherwise couldn't digest. This relationship between humans and their microbes is generally a healthy one, but changes to the mix of microbes in the digestive tract are suspected to play a role in obesity, malnutrition, Crohn's disease and other ailments. Now, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis show they can grow and manipulate personalized collections of human intestinal microbes in the laboratory and pluck ...

Doctors are encouraged to consider therapies in addition to blood thinners to treat certain patients with potentially dangerous blood clots that form in the deep veins and travel to the lungs, according to a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association. The statement is published online in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. More than 250,000 people in the United States are hospitalized with deep vein thrombosis each year. Previously, there has been limited guidance for physicians on some of the more serious conditions caused by deep ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Some 3 million children in the United States have some form of food allergy, ranging in severity from mild to life-threatening. Milk allergy is the most common, affecting 2.5 percent of children under age 3. In a small clinical study, immunologists and allergists at Children's Hospital Boston and the Stanford University School of Medicine report effectively desensitizing milk-allergic patients by increasing their exposure to milk in tandem with an allergy drug called omalizumab, allowing children to build up resistance quickly with limited allergic reactions. Their ...

Coupling an electronic prescription drug ordering system with a computerized method for reporting adverse events can dramatically reduce the number of medication errors in a hospital's psychiatric unit, suggests new Johns Hopkins research. "Medication errors are a leading cause of adverse events in hospitals," says study leader Geetha Jayaram, M.D., M.B.A., an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "With the use of electronic ordering, training of personnel and standardized information technology systems, ...

Roger Johnson, editor of the District Messenger, the Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, writes: "The Crack in the Lens by Darlene A Cypser... tells an engrossing story of the boy Holmes and at the same time explores the reasons why the man Holmes turned out as he did - a brilliant, unconventional, and apparently emotionless righter of wrongs." In this account Mycroft, Sherrinford and Sherlock are the sons of Squire Siger Holmes of Mycroft Manor in Yorkshire, where Sherlock is educated by a private tutor, Professor James Moriarty. These inventions of William ...

A software package designed to minimize the potential risks of synthetic biology for the nation's defense and security is now available to the gene synthesis industry and synthetic biology community in an open-source format. Virginia Tech has licensed GenoTHREAT, a software tool that helps detect the use of synthetic DNA as bioterrorism agents. Developed as an open-source project by a team led by Jean Peccoud, associate professor at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, it is being released using the Apache License Version 2.0 to ensure broad accessibility. ...

A joint study by local oyster growers and researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science shows that moving farmed oysters into saltier waters just prior to harvest nearly eliminates the presence of a bacterium that can sicken humans. The findings—reported by VIMS professors Kim Reece and Howard Kator, and local oyster growers Thomas Gallivan, A.J. Erskine, and Tommy Leggett—may offer a relatively low-cost solution to a controversial change in FDA regulations that many growers believe will eventually affect the oyster industry in Chesapeake Bay. The Food and ...

Washington, D.C., 21 March, 2011 – Alcohol use during pregnancy is common and is associated with significant threats to the health and development of exposed offspring. Despite warnings from the Surgeon General to limit alcohol use if pregnant or contemplating pregnancy, a recent survey by the National Birth Defects Prevention Study(1) found that nearly one-third of women drank alcohol at some time during their pregnancy, with one-fourth of the women surveyed having drunk during the first trimester. Heavy use of alcohol during pregnancy may lead to fetal alcohol syndrome ...

A new study by Baylor University geology researchers shows that Native Americans' land use nearly a century ago produced a widespread impact on the eastern North American landscape and floodplain development several hundred years prior to the arrival of major European settlements. The study appears on-line in the journal Geology. Researchers attribute early colonial land-use practices, such as deforestation, plowing and damming with influencing present-day hydrological systems across eastern North America. Previous studies suggest that Native Americans' land use in ...